ALCANTARA, Lesley Angelica Geronimo

LL770

Psycho-Analytic Study of “Nerve” (2016)

Nerve is a movie that shows the perils of social media, online gaming and peer pressure.

High school senior Venus "Vee" Delmonico longs to leave Staten Island for college, but
is avoiding telling her mother as they are still mourning the death of her older brother. The
conscious and unconscious mind are both present in the character of Vee. Her conscious mind
interacts with the outside world. In the first few minutes of the movie, it shows how she interacts
with her best friend in the morning as well as the students in the high school she’s going too. We
can see that her conscious mind is in the midst of telling her mom about the email that she had
received that morning. On the other hand, her unconscious mind which is made of the drive for
power, love and sexuality is telling her to go on and try the online reality game: Nerve. She was
pressured by her peers and another thing that led her to try this one is because of the rejection she
received from J.P. her crush. Then, she suddenly thought of really engaging in Nerve since she
saw how popular her best friend Sydney is.

In the online reality game, players accept dares as they're invited by watchers and receive
monetary rewards if they successfully complete those dares. Watchers in turn pay to spectate as
the players attempt their challenges. Pressured by her peers, Vee decided to join Nerve. Vee
deliberately liked to change her lifestyle and be like her friend Sydney which once said that Vee
should try to get out of her comfort zones. With Vee’s unconscious motives to be popular too
and be friend with J.P. her crush, she decided to enlist as a player in the game.

Her first dare as a player is to kiss a stranger in a café downtown. With the help of her
friend Tommy, she was able to accomplish the task which in return gave her a thousand dollar.
She became one of the top players in Nerve which made her to accomplish more tasks and
becomes completely unaware of her life as a simple senior student. She showed her unwanted
desires to be far better than her friend Sydney. She felt pleasure by just accomplishing the first
task. She has totally repressed her life then and even her friend Tommy was left in the café
because she decided to go with the guy whom she kissed in the first task. We saw that this
experience was repressed from Vee; she felt like a new person experiencing fame at that
moment. She suddenly forgot the world that she’s living in. It’s was a really nice experience for
her to go out of her comfort zone and try new things. She followed herself which is really new
ALCANTARA, Lesley Angelica Geronimo
LL770

compared to what she was before. She was seen as a smart schoolgirl who always follow her
mom’s advice.

We also see how devastating it is still for her mom because of his brother’s death and it
shows her fear to talk to her mom about her college acceptance letter. Forms of objectification
were also seen in the movie Nerve. One example is on how Vee was used by Ian to be on top of
the game too. Some dares included Vee without her knowing that she was used to accomplish a
certain dare. This is instrumentality. She was treated as a tool for one’s own purposes. In this
case, for Ian to accomplish the dare.

Since then, she started attitude shift which really surprised Tommy. That night that she
started playing Nerve, her relationship with Tommy got affected. She chose to go with Ian to the
city, leaving Tommy alone. Tommy was surprised because of Vee’s action which she chose to be
with a stranger compared to him who’s been a friend to her for a long time.

At the end of the movie, it was her and Ian who got to the final round. Vee’s plan was to
not get killed by Ian and to stop the game. Vee herself is a symbol of death. As throughout the
movie, it was her who is trying to get all attention of the society without her knowing that it
could lead to death. Nerve is a timely reminder that there is a large amount of pressure from the
society.